


Duality

by baichan



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 11:34:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13122879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baichan/pseuds/baichan
Summary: Jack is beloved not only by the wind but also the moonbeams.





	Duality

The moon is silent but moonlight is not. Jack learns this by the wisps winding through his fingers and dancing through his hair. They loved him as much as the wind loves him.

 _Nightlight!_ They call him and it is his name and not his name. He supposes it's fine to have two names.

They hang around his staff and are enthralled by the frost that blooms from his fingertips.

 _Forever child! Frost child!_ They chatter, gleaming off of it and bouncing back to him. Playful little ghosts. At least they're easy to understand. Humans are different, different ones speak different languages and he doesn't understand any. Most are so unlike the nuanced chirps.

He learns over the years, all of them, most of them. He learns his heart is cold but less so when it's snows when there's ice and cold and then it becomes _fun._ Skating is fun. Snowballs are fun. Sledding and snow angels and snow castles and waking up to see white is fun.

Maybe not the last part. He doesn't sleep, not at night when the moonbeams keep him company and not during the day when the sun's full and bright. He's not tired anyway.  


The guardians are strange. They talk to the Man in the Moon, or at least the man in the moon talks to them. Moonbeams hit and it's strange and ceremonial and very one sided.

“This is how you talk to him?” Jack asks, voice a bit distasteful.

North laughs, “How else would we talk to him?”

Jack side eyes the moonbeams dancing around him.

_Nightlight! Beloved child! Forever child!_

“What do you mean? Ask the moonbeams of course.”

“The... moonbeams?”

Jack floats and North can see, for the first time the way he's loved, not just by the wind but by the moonlight.

“Nightlight?”

Jack gives him a look and laughs, “I’m Jack Frost. But I suppose it's fine to have two names.”

He glows in the moonlight as he slips out.

They don't meet much but Tooth stops in for a quick hello and tea.

“Jack can talk to moonbeams,” North mentions.

Toothiana looks at her drink, “He really does look like him, doesn't he.”

“He does.”

Toothiana sighs. They had already grieved for Nightlight long ago. In her heart he was gone. Jack though... was Jack. And she did not want to grieve for him.

“Jack is Jack.”

North nods.  


Tooth visits Aster right after Easter. Working with perishables meant Bunny had little to do now.

“Do you ever think Jack looks like Nightlight?” She asks. The question was out of place.

Aster sits up and looks at her. He was tending to his garden leisurely, as he didn’t really needed to garden.

“I suppose so,” he mutters.

Toothiana’s feathers ruffle. She looks sad, in an old and tired way.

“Things change, Tooth.”

She blinks, “But he can talk to moonbeams. I just - I grieved for him. Honored his bravery and courage. Jack is...”

“Is Jack. Nightlight might not be dead but he's gone.”

Tooth nods and seems to find some resolution. It's better to think that way. Nightlight was dear and his tragedy stung. Jack Frost was also dear. Two forever children. Nightlight was not Jack, but became Jack. Aster had known but not known, not wanting to see what was right in front of him. 

Toothiana was right though. They had grieved and in their hearts, Nightlight was gone.

 

Sandman is not the last to know but the first. They were so similar that even if it wasn't true he would have thought it anyway. Jack and Nightlight were the same. Maybe it was that Jack Frost didn't sleep. He didn't dream.

Jack Frost can be so very different. Maybe he is what Nightlight would have been if he had been jaded.

 

Katherine visits, as she does very rarely. She has new stories to tell them, all of them written in her book.

North has to tell her. It’s not something he can keep from the one who was closest to him.

“Jack Frost, the new guardian...

Her eyes are sad, “North. I know.”

She turns her pages.

“He's a forever child. He's meant to be a forever child. He had to forget...”

North looks at the book, Nightlight giving her the goodnight kiss. Her finger traces his figure lovingly.

“I think it's best if I don't see him. I think its best the less he knows.”

“That's not fair!”

She looks at him with sad eyes, “North, don't do this to him. Don't do this to me.”

She shakes her head. Then standing to leave she pulls out a smaller book.

“Give this to him, please.”

“What is it?”

“It's his story, about a boy who is loved by not only moonbeams but also the wind, and has not only the moon but the Guardians. It's about a boy who makes his home in a lake and spreads fun and snow and is a true guardian.”

‘The story of the first Guardian,’ North can’t help but think.

Mother Goose looks at him as she packs up to leave, “Please North, it's best this way. Even if you told him... He's not Nightlight.”

His name pains her.

“Maybe one day I'll be ready to meet Jack Frost. I’ll have to have my best stories prepared.”

She leaves.  


North doesn't tell him.

Tooth does.

“Jack... do you know who Nightlight is?”

North stares at her surprised.

Jack floats in the air.

“I'm Nightlight right?” he answers simply.

The room is frozen, not by ice or cold but by shock. They hadn't expected him to know and the name was so light to him, to be thrown out carelessly. To them it had weight.

“Then...”

Jack cuts her off himself, holding his new book gently.

“But I'm Jack Frost.”

Tooth bites her lip at how Jack was stark and simple.

She wants to argue that it's more complex than that, that Nightlight was gone or he wasn't and Jack would be gone. One or the other, not both and she was ready to grieve, again or for the first time.

But maybe he just was both.

Tooth realized nothing would change. Jack was Jack, and maybe he was also Nightlight in the way he is beloved by moonbeams and glowed a bit. Aster was right.

 

The moonbeams tell him that the moon wasn’t ignoring him to hurt him. They tell Jack he had wanted him to find his own path, to live freely. Jack can’t grasp the details, old memories that Nightlight help dear. They were gone, like snow in the heat.

He looks up at the moon. It was fading, morning was coming quick. Perching on the branch he sent the moonbeams away.

**Author's Note:**

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